In article , Jon Crowcroft
writes

What surprises me is that there isn't more reverse commuute

Trains to Cambridge in the morning have appalling timekeeping. Even
people commuting from as close as Royston/Meldreth etc are only doing it
as a distress purchase.

I'm guessing that only the rather baroque residence
requirement of the University has stopped some of that
community taking that view

You entirely misunderstand the "boarding school" nature of education at
Cambridge, which takes places 7 days a week. It's simply not like most
other Universities. It suits people very well, and if it's not to your
taste then no-one is forcing you to go there.

Going the other way, a friend of mine who works at UCL
(where I used to) did indeed move to Cambridge for
life style reasons, and the 70min estimate for
commute time is about right (note -
depending on your work, this is made up of
45 mins of useable reading/working time...so in fact
its very tractable - in his case, he even gets london
weighting on his salary which almost exactly covers
the train ticket costs )

Actually, the 70 minutes is the time *on the train* in the rush hour
(not door to door). That's 58 minutes for the journey and five minutes
either end for getting on and off.

45 mins is the much faster journey time during the day on a non-stop
Cambridge Cruiser, which don't run in the peaks.

And if you are lucky enough to get a seat you can do some work, but the
trains lack useful tables and it's a real struggle.

If GNER trains didnt get in the way at the Hitchin junction,
theCambridge-London service for King's Cross could easily be
a tad faster - _ believe there was discussion 3-4 years ago
about speeding the route up further to 35 mins but:

The cruisers manage to get through Hitchin without stopping. It's about
57 miles by train, and 35 mins is a bit optimistic (average of 98mph
using trains that I think have a max speed of 100mph). The line speed
from Hitchin to Cambridge is the limiting factor, a major upgrade about
5 years ago raised it to the 70-80 mph region, I think (and knocked 2
mins of the timings). Upgrading again to 100 mph is unrealistic.

If you look at GNER timings (and they run at well over 100mph) then
Hitchin would seem to be about 21 mins from KX (Stevenage is timetabled
at 19 mins as a stop; or dividing the KX-HIT-PBO distance equally into
45 mins you get 20 mins, but the southern end is always slower) leaving
only 14 mins for the remaining 25 miles! The cruisers do well to average
about 70 north of Hitchin (assuming they can also get to Hitchin in 21
mins, which is averaging just over 90).
--
"now, the thing you type on and the window you stare out of are the same thing"